CHRISTMAS ADVERTISING

An advertisement in 1910 for Ivory Soap showed a child waiting for Santa Claus in front of a fireplace with a bol of water, a towel and a bar of Ivory soap so Santa could wash up after coming down the sooty chimney.

In 1843 English businessman Sir Henry Cole commissioned artist John Calcott Horsley to produce the first printed Christmas Cards.

Robert May created Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer in 1939 as a Christmas promotion for Montgomery Ward department store in Chicago.

The first Christmas cards printed in the United States were sent by businesses to their customers in the 1850s. Pease's Great Variety Store in Albany, New York was one of the first stores to use this form of advertising.

In 1931 the Coca-Cola Company commissioned artist Haddon Sundblom to show Santa drinking a Coke to encourage sales in the winter months. From 1931 to 1964 these annual ads became a Christmas tradition, and helped to reinforce the modern American image of Santa Claus (which had been forming since the early 1900s): a rotund, jolly and bearded man, dressed in a red outfit trimmed in white fur with a broad black belt and black boots.

Note: These fun Christmas facts and trivia are about the secular aspects of this day, and are not in any way intended to trivialize this important Christian Holy Day.